


This is Your 3 a.m. Wakeup Call

by ShaneVansen



Category: Fringe
Genre: Drama, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Romance, UST, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-09
Updated: 2010-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaneVansen/pseuds/ShaneVansen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strike>Five</strike> Six times Olivia wakes Peter in the middle of the night.  no spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is Your 3 a.m. Wakeup Call

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lovely sugangel7, who very generously donated to those in need in return for fic (and an eventually forthcoming vid) for LJ's help_pakistan fundraiser. Many apologies for it being late, and I do hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Many thanks go to oparu and borg_princess, who were kind enough to beta, and the latter of whom provided the order of the scenes. She has a very interesting rationale behind the sequence, and I just couldn't say no. *g* Remaining errors are, as always, my own (though grav_ity okayed the title, so I could probably blame her for that one).
> 
> Scenes range from early S1 to roughly three years in the future. Individual parts are not necessarily from the same timeline, though there's no reason why they couldn't be.

_—i—_

The pounding at the door wakes Peter with a start, any trace of fatigue wiped out in a bare millisecond by the adrenaline now pumping through his system. Cursing, he glances at the clock as he throws back the covers and heads for the door. 2:18am? Seriously?

If it's some drunken idiot who's got the wrong room, he's not being held responsible for his actions. If the FBI wants him so bad, they can bail him out of jail when he's arrested for assault.

What he's not expecting to find on the other side of the door – though really, he muses, this should have been his first guess – is Special Agent Olivia Dunham.

They stare at each other for a few seconds before Peter shakes his head in disbelief. "Seriously?"

"A body was found at a club downtown." She launches into the briefing without so much as a hello or an apology for waking him up in the middle of the night. "Although witnesses confirm having seen her as recently as eleven pm, the corpse is completely dehydrated and as desiccated as a mummy. Identity was based on the victim's clothing and ID found on the body."

He's still just staring at her. " _Seriously_?"

"I need you to wake Walter and tell him what's happened. If he needs any equipment from the lab, have him call Astrid and she'll pick up whatever he needs and meet us at the club."

Peter tilts his head. "You don't sleep, do you?"

Although her expression doesn't change, he's pretty sure that she's trying not to smile. "Not often. Can you go get Walter?"

Shaking his head, he backs into the room. "Give me fifteen minutes. We'll meet you downstairs."

"Okay," she acknowledges, and then, just before he closes the door all the way, he hears, "Peter?"

He swings the door back open. "Yeah?"

She hesitates. "Thanks. For..."

"...for answering the door at two in the morning?"

This time, she does smile. "Yeah."

Though he's not entirely sure that he wants to – she _did_ wake him up in the middle of the night, after all – Peter finds himself smiling back. "Fifteen minutes," he repeats, shutting the door behind him.

As he checks the hall closet for Walter, Peter's still smiling.

 

 _—ii—_

He wants to sleep – really, _really_ wants to sleep – but he can hear Olivia calling his name, and she's starting to sound worried. It takes pretty much every ounce of willpower that he has, but Peter manages to drag himself up from the warm darkness of slumber. "Yeah," he mumbles. "'m 'wake, 'm 'wake."

"Peter," she says again, running her fingers through his hair. "Can you open your eyes for me?"

It seems like too much effort, but he figures the faster he finds out what she wants, the sooner he can go back to sleep. Groaning quietly at the light in the room – faint as it is, it's still enough to aggravate the headache he's just realized he has - Peter cracks open his eyes.

She's kind of fuzzy, but he can see Olivia smiling down at him. "I just need you to answer a few questions for me, okay?" He blinks, which she seems to take as an affirmative. "Do you know what day it is?"

He ponders for a second, and decides, "No."

She looks faintly alarmed. "You don't?"

Peter shakes his head. "It _was_ Wednesday, but I don't know how long I've been sleeping. So it's either still Wednesday or now it's Thursday."

She smacks him lightly on the shoulder. "Be serious. What's the year?"

Obligingly, he tells her.

"Who's the president?"

He tells her that too.

"And your computer password?"

"FBIsmostwanted," he replies without thinking, then realizes what she's done. "Hey!" he objects as Olivia chuckles and makes for the door.

"No fair taking advantage of the guy with the concussion!"

 

 _—iii—_

"Peter!" Olivia's calling from somewhere. "Over here! You have to come over here!"

He's trying to get to her as quickly as he can, but the fog makes it difficult to find anything in the large copse of trees. Finally, he comes across a small clearing. Olivia's there, dressed in forties-style clothes with the hairstyle and makeup to match, riding a zebra. "Shoot!" she encourages. "Hurry up, you're running out of time!"

Peter looks down to find the puck sitting practically at his feet. Swinging back his stick, he lets loose with a slapshot that lands squarely in the net. A second later the buzzer sounds, and Olivia launches herself into his arms in a celebratory hug as the game ends. She's trying to tell him something, but the buzzer is too loud and he can't make out her words.

Eventually, consciousness trumps dreamland and the sound of the buzzer transforms into the familiar ring of his cell. Fumbling from beneath the covers, Peter manages to snag the phone before it goes to voicemail. "'Lo?" he mumbles, flopping back down on the mattress and tugging the sheets up higher. The temperature's dropped since he went to bed, and the open window has left the room freezing.

"Peter?"

Instantly, he's wide awake. "Olivia? What's wrong?"

"It's Walter. He's... well, he's _here_."

 _This can't be good_. Wincing, Peter glances at the clock. 3:54. "Where's 'here'?"

"I'm at home."

He had it narrowed down to either her apartment or the lab, but truthfully, he was expecting the lab. Between Olivia's habitual insomnia and workaholic nature, and Walter's frequent middle-of-the-night "insights," both of them ending up at the lab at the same ridiculous hour of the morning isn't completely out of the question. But for Walter to show up at Olivia's apartment? "Why would he be there?"

On the other end of the line, there's a puff of air that could be a laugh. "You know, after half an hour I'm still not entirely sure."

"Dammit." Sitting up, Peter throws back the covers and scrubs a hand over his face. "I'm sorry, Olivia. I'll be there as soon as I can." Phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear, he starts hunting for some clothes.

"Thanks." Half a city away, he can practically hear Olivia smiling. "Oh, and Peter? You might want to bring Walter some pants."

 

 _—iv—_

"Peter!"

Olivia tries not to laugh when Peter, who's been dozing in her desk chair, jerks upright so suddenly that he nearly topples to the floor. "What?!"

"Don't Stop Believing."

He blinks at her. "Don't stop believing in _what_?"

"That song I couldn't remember the name of earlier? It's Don't Stop Believing."

Mission accomplished, Olivia spins away from his look of utter confusion and heads back into the main section of the lab. As she leaves, she can hear Peter muttering, "You have _got_ to be kidding me," and tries not to laugh.

That'd teach him drink the last of her coffee.

 

 _—v—_

The porcelain is cold. So are the tiles. And the cast-iron tub. Olivia, currently in contact with all three of them to some degree or another, is freezing.

Her stomach churns again and Olivia surges up to brace herself over the toilet, but by now there isn't much left to come up. She gags a bit, spits as much of the foul taste out of her mouth as she can, and then sinks back to the floor, exhausted and miserable. What could she have possibly done to deserve this punishment on top of all the daily hassles that come with saving the universe?

A warm hand rests on her shoulder at the same time as she hears an affectionate, if sleep-roughened, "Hey." Looking up, she can see Peter in the dim glow of the nightlight, looking tired and concerned, his hair sticking up in all directions. "You okay?"

Speaking is too much effort, and so Olivia settles for shooting him a half-hearted dirty look before closing her eyes. Given that her stomach is finally empty, she could probably go back to bed now. Her bedroom seems much too far away, however.

Peter settles onto the floor next to her, his hand moving to rub soothing circles on her back. "I don't think I've ever seen you sick," he tells her, brushing her hair behind her ears.

She wriggles around so that she can lean against him. He's much warmer than the floor, and the heat makes her feel a little better. Or maybe it's just him. "That's because I don't get sick," she answers.

"Never?"

Olivia shakes her head a little. "Never. I had perfect attendance at school almost every year." Only when her mother died, when she was fourteen, had she missed any time. Then, she had missed a couple of months as she tried to figure out how she and Rachel were going to survive on their own. An aunt she hadn't seen since childhood – her father's sister, now deceased – eventually took them in, but for almost six weeks it had just been the two of them. Though she missed so many days the school threatened to fail her that semester, Olivia made sure that Rachel had made it to school on time, every day, without fail.

Peter shifts a little too, so that he's leaning against the bathtub and she's leaning completely against him, his arm wrapped around her. "That's... kind of weird, actually."

It probably is, she thinks, but given the recent narrative of her life it barely qualifies as a footnote. Hell, knowing Walter, an advanced immune system was a deliberate side effect of cortexiphan. Humming a non-response, she burrows closer into his side.

She's been drifting in that half-asleep state that comes from being tired but not quite comfortable enough to sleep for a while – or so it feels – when Peter murmurs, "Olivia?"

"Mmm?" She can't be bothered to form actual words.

"Your stomach seems to have settled. Do you want to go back to bed?"

That seems like a really, really good idea. "Yeah."

He helps her up and leads her back to bed, finding her a clean set of pyjamas and covering her with her favourite blanket once she's changed. He disappears for a few minutes and returns with a glass of water and a garbage pail, lined with a plastic bag. "Just in case," he says off her look, and Olivia's really in no position to argue the point.

She's already half asleep before he climbs into bed, and drifts off completely to the feeling of his hand rubbing gently over her stomach.

 

 _—vi—_

Maybe she's genetically pre-disposed to respond to the noise. Maybe she's a lighter sleeper. Maybe Peter's just feigning sleep. Regardless, Olivia got up the last two times. It's his turn.

"Peter," she mumbles, but she's tired and the word isn't intelligible even to her own ears. Clearing her throat, she tries again. "Peter."

Still nothing. Rolling onto her side, she manages to drag her hand from beneath the covers to poke him none-too-gently in the side. "Peter!"

There's a muffled "Ow!" and then his head appears from beneath the pillow. "What was that for?" he grumbles at her, blinking heavily.

"Baby's crying," Olivia tells him, though really, she thinks that the screams from the next room should have clued him in.

Groaning, he looks over at the clock. "It's four in the morning."

"And?"

"And _no one_ should be awake at four in the morning."

"Be sure to explain that to the three-month-old while you're changing her diaper," Olivia says without sympathy, snuggling back into a comfortable position.

"Olivia...."

She cracks her eyes open just enough to glare at him. "I told you that you didn't have to stick around, but you wanted to be here. And I've already been up twice tonight. So, it's your turn to look after Amy."

"Anyone ever tell you that you're cranky when you don't get enough sleep?" Peter asks, humour tingeing the note of resignation in his voice. She doesn't even bother to open her eyes when she sticks her tongue out at him, and he laughs softly before kissing her forehead. "I don't see why Ella can't look after her."

"Ella's ten," she points out sleepily as he climbs out of bed.

Pulling the sheets up to her chin, she can hear his footsteps as he crosses the room. "Next time you agree to babysit Rachel's kids, I'm spending the night at Walter's."

There's an _I told you so_ in there somewhere, Olivia's sure, but she's warm and comfortable and it's not worth the effort it would take to say the words. Distantly, she can hear Peter speaking softly to Amy, a surprisingly comforting sound, and she's sound asleep long before he makes it back to bed.

 _\--end--_


End file.
